Toxic_Torch

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I played a Fire/Stone Tanker to 41 and a BS/Regen Scrapper to 50, both were leveled during I0 to I5, but also tested in I6 and I7. Acrobatics is not as good Knockback protection as Integration.


[/ QUOTE ]According to NoFuture, Acro is -100 KB, while integration (And, for example, GA, rooted and unyielding) is -10.

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I wouldn't quote NF as a definite answer to anything. Besides, my ingame experience tells me that Acrobatics is less reliable than Integration.

I can't remember ever being knocked down with Integration running. On the other hand, Acrobatics has never been foolproof KB protection for me, something that has caused trouble for my Fire Tanker's teammates.

BindW:
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Is it rooted or GA that gives KB resistance for stone tanks?

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Both. Rooted is the mez protection for non-GA and GA includes additional mez protection.

[/ QUOTE ]Mez protection and KB protection dont always go hand in hand for the melee ATs, so as this is a blaster bored it would help if we didnt bundle mez and KB prot/res together...

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DA, Fire and Elec are currently the only Armor sets that do not provide KB resistance with their mez protection toggles.

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Is it rooted or GA that gives KB resistance for stone tanks?

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Both. Rooted is the mez protection for non-GA and GA includes additional mez protection.

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I didnt think there was a def cap

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There is a cap to how much Defense you can get, it's just extremely high and rarely reached. It is, however, something different from the Chance-To-Hit floor and cap (5% and 95% respectively).

When most people use "Defense Cap" they refer instead to the "Chance-To-Hit floor", ie. the minimum 5% chance of hitting. They are related but not the same.

There is also a To-Hit buff cap and again many people confuse this with the "Chance-To-Hit cap" of 95%.

Positron or Castle posted the numbers a while ago on the US forum, in response to some chatter about the mob rank Accuracy/To-Hit changes iirc.

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With 8 people, that's 20%def, and 3 slotted, all of them, 31.2% def. Don't look like near the cap to me


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Apparently it's 4.66% base for defenders

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Many values are floating around for Maneuvers, the free I7 addendum to the Prima guide* lists Maneuvers as a base 3.5% which is apparently before AT modifiers. 4.4-4.6 sounds like a reasonable value for Defender Maneuvers.

56% is hardly anywhere near the cap though, that's closer to 200%. But if everyone on an all Emp team keeps one other teammate covered with Fortitude then Maneuvers should not be needed.

*The updated Prima guide uses numbers provided by the devs, link.

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Good work though - its complex stuff to get your head around! Anyone else got some control variants?

[/ QUOTE ]Umm.. I just hit the "attack my target"-button until everything's dead, does that count?

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Of course, it more than adequate for about 99.999% of all battles.

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trying something a bit different.

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HERETIC! You are only allowed to play the officially sanctioned Min/Max builds!

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Acro protects against far more than 90% of KB, it makes you practically impervious to KB, although I have heard that combinations of location based KB powers can stack through it I have never been KBed with acro on that I can recall.

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I'm pretty sure that boss wolves can occasionally knock you down even with Acrobatics running.

[/ QUOTE ]Not experienced it myself, although they do have some of the better KB potentials. I have seen Tanks get KBed before people with acro take a fall in AoE KB situations, but then it's hard to measure in tandem.

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I played a Fire/Stone Tanker to 41 and a BS/Regen Scrapper to 50, both were leveled during I0 to I5, but also tested in I6 and I7. Acrobatics is not as good Knockback protection as Integration.

Anything that causes Knockback has a chance to toss an Acrobatics user. And most tanks are at the recieving end of more Knockbacks than the rest of the team, even in AoE situations.

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Superior invisability, group invisability, combat invisbility (not sure about this one) grant invisibilty.

These all allow it

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But how many of them are available to an Ice/Dev/Fire Blaster, hmm?

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I am not sure I understand how the powers you mention can be obtained.

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Get a planner ASAP. It will help you understand how it works if you play around a bit.

And there is no "Plight" here, only BindW

[/ QUOTE ]Keep telling yourself that

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I'll just keep telling you instead, how about that?

[/ QUOTE ]I'll keep powerposting then

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Well, BindW what you're doing is usually called multiposting. Most multiposters do keep to double or tripple posting...

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been thinking of making a pve

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You'll only need one Accuracy enhancement in each attack unless you're doing +4/+5 missions.

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I am not sure I understand how the powers you mention can be obtained.

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Get a planner ASAP. It will help you understand how it works if you play around a bit.

And there is no "Plight" here, only BindW

[/ QUOTE ]Keep telling yourself that

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I'll just keep telling you instead, how about that?

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My favourite Offender conept had to be the Rad/* Offender who let their teammates die so they could cast Vengeance and then go to town with Fallout. As such, you could Radient Aura. Something about being able to heal but choosing not to is just really creepy for a Defender - especially if you don't tell the PUG you just joined why I heard a team of 8 such folks could lay waste to pretty much anything, but that was before (and probably why!) they made Vengeance unstackable. I never got to try that build out myself

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I've always wanted to do a themed offender team. If anyone else wants to try the whole 8 xrad/rad I would SO love to try this. I think rad/rad would be the best thing to have 8 of because EF+AM+Leadership alone, on all 8 people pretty much provides you with all the defence, accuracy, damage, stamina, recharge and status protection you could ever wish for.

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Why /rad? Other secondaries would be equally/more useful.

[/ QUOTE ]Rad=Best AoE.

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Or most (non-nuke) AoE at least: 1 Cone, 1 PBAoE and 1 targeted AoE, all moderate damage.

Archery is a decent second with the non-draining nuke on top of the Cone and targeted AoE.

Dark has 2 moderate and 1 minor Cone. Sonic has 1 moderate and 2 minor Cones. The rest has 2 AoE attacks.

If only Haze didn't cause random knockback...

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Sonic Resonance/Psychic Blast!

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Only do that if you team near constantly. SR is very poor when solo and when you're up against something that resists Psi (expect to run into that in many missions beyond level 20) you'll take forever to whittle it down on your own.

Almost anything that resists Psi resists it heavily. The other damage types have neutral, vulnerable and resistant enemies across all levels. Other than Clockwork, Psi has few vulnerable enemies but still plenty of neutral and resistant enemies.

Psi is ok if you want to be different from what you percieve as the majority on the EU servers. Unless you have accurate numbers the ratio of /Psi on the EU servers is pure conjecture.

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Attacks that throw you half way accross the room and land you on your bum.

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Thanks for the clarifications!

And, btw, that's how I understood it before. My energy attacks, the description of which mentions a "disorienting" effect, have in reality a knockback effect.

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The Energy Manipulation melee attacks cause Disorientation (except Power Thrust which is Knockback) and the Energy Blast attacks cause Knockback.

And it's not Fly that helps against Knockback (though it does provide a bit of help) it's Hover that does so. With Hover active you'll just spin quickly in place once instead of being tossed back several yards and then have to stand up.

Acrobatics protects completely against roughly 90% of all Knockbacks and it provides resistance and (minor) protection against Hold effects. Acrobatics is iirc slightly more costly to keep running than Hover.

Holding/Sleeping someone and placing a Trip Mine next to them =

Trip Mine is mostly a solo power or something you'd use for base defense during a raid. If you neither solo nor participate in base raids then it's not that useful for you.

BFR is plagued by a slow activation, much like Trip Mine. Do you need the third Hold and can you survive the activation time? In my opinion you should only take BFR if you answer yes to both those.

Ice Storm (Snow Storm is in Cold Mastery) does seem like the best overall power of the three for you.

Of course, Super Speed is much better than any of the three due to the +Stealth stacking with Cloaking Device for Invisibility level Stealth (PvE only) that still permits attacks.

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If you use the planner MaX linked you to, remember to let it connect to the internet if you have a firewall, so that it can download updates and keep you up-to-date on the latest powers and patches.

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And a word of advice: Don't trust the numbers in any planner as more than a rough guide. All of them are updated by fans and based of whatever numbers non-devs have access to.

Use updates to your selected planner more as something to ensure that powersets have their powers in the correct order and that new powersets get added so you can plan with them.

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I am not sure I understand how the powers you mention can be obtained.

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Get a planner ASAP. It will help you understand how it works if you play around a bit.

And there is no "Plight" here, only BindW

[/ QUOTE ]As Toxic here didn't feel like linking to a planner, see here.

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I won't link to any specific planners because they're all a matter of taste.

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I am not sure I understand how the powers you mention can be obtained.

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Get a planner ASAP. It will help you understand how it works if you play around a bit.

And there is no "Plight" here, only BindW

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but would I reply if I didn't have someththing worthwhile to say

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Do you really want an answer

ps. Your name is BindW until you change your display handle

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Generally speaking, pick powers that look kinda fun and by the time you hit the 34 respec you'll have a good idea of exactly what you do and don't want.

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I'd say:
Pick two attack powers that aren't snipes early on. It will help you out if you ever get in a situation where you have to solo.

Pick a lot of your primary powers and try them out. Just because you have experience with them from a Controller or Corruptor doesn't mean that you'll use them the same way when playing a Defender.

Whether you think you made a critical mistake or not, do the first respec with a level 24-25 team (unless you've got a respec from Vet rewards or a freespec). When you want to respec, (ab)use the Training Room to test out respecs before you commit to one on Live.

Don't worry about slotting until you start messing with SOs. The game is easy enough on Heroic that you can get to 25 without slotting your attacks as a solo Defender, it will just take some patience.

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Gah, misread and thought you said they are affected

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Constant damage buff of that magnitude could easily go overpowered. ALthough saying that, if it was made to affect only the primary (not the mines etc),

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Device droppables are already unaffected by buffs on the player. In any case, I'd expect a 15-20% damage buff at most if such a thing happens, remember that TD already has a secondary function with the +Perception.

[/ QUOTE ]AFAIK TD does NOT transfer to spawned entities, since it's a toggle, not a click.

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As I already said, Device droppables do not gain the benefit of any buff(s) on the player. Buffs include Inspirations, Aim, Fulcrum Shift, Targeting Drone and similar powers.

Whether a buff is a toggle or not doesn't matter, a buff is a buff is a buff. If a power is affected by buffs then it is affected by all buffs regardless of their source.

The Rain powers, Burn and Ignite were specifically altered so that they are affected by buffs on the player, almost all other drop powers are unaffected by buffs on the player.

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Thanks for the tip on flight, as a first character, it seems like flight must just be "fun"

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One thing you owe to yourself is making at least one character that takes powers for their fun-factor and not for their efficiency.

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Constant damage buff of that magnitude could easily go overpowered. ALthough saying that, if it was made to affect only the primary (not the mines etc),

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Device droppables are already unaffected by buffs on the player. In any case, I'd expect a 15-20% damage buff at most if such a thing happens, remember that TD already has a secondary function with the +Perception.

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Is it worth taking Assault and Maneuvers? What kind of Off/Def bonusses do they actually offer?

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Assault is a 12.5% Damage buff which is roughly equivalent to a -2 DO Dam. It can't be improved upon.

Maneuvers is 3.5% Defense, which you can improve to ~5.6% or a bit more than pre-Global Defense Nerf Combat Jumping.

Assault is decent on it's own as a pre-requisite for Tactics while Maneuvers need to be stacked with other Defense powers to work decently.

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Finally, what other levels can I do respec missions?

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Level 34 and 44 offer new chances for respecification, remember that you can wait until level 50 and then do 3 respecs in a row if you want. Level 24, 34 and 44 each just grant access to a respec.